Courtesy of UCLA Performing Arts The Trisha Brown Dance
Company, a contemporary dance group, performs “El
Trilogy” to new jazz scores at UCLA’s Royce Hall.
By Jinjue Pak
Daily Bruin Contributor
Postmodern dance is changing, and that change is pioneered by
acclaimed choreographer Trisha Brown.
Brown is distinguished for her exploration of and
experimentation with an unpredictable repertoire of diverse and
innovative movements. Her dance company, the Trisha Brown Dance
Company, will be performing in “El Trilogy” at UCLA
tonight and tomorrow night.
She began her dancing career at age 10 and in her late teens,
delved into the aesthetics of choreography at Mills University.
Unsatisfied with the dance repertoires she was seeing, Brown
decided she was going to create her own movements.
“A natural evolution for a good dancer is to go into
choreography,” Brown said during a phone interview. “I
wasn’t receiving things that I thought were possible in
choreography. So I thought, I should do it.”
After garnering public interest with her choreography at the
Judson Dance Theater, Brown decided to form her own group,
appropriately titled after herself.
The Company is comprised of 12 dancers who tour internationally
for twenty weeks a year. They have performed in famous opera houses
worldwide, as well as at universities and colleges.
With each individual piece her company performs, Brown offers a
different style of dance. In her earlier years, Brown explored the
idea of complex movements with her “Unstable Molecular
Structures” technique, in which her dancers produced a fluid
and geometric style.
She also developed a more vigorous style called the
“Valient Series,” introducing gender-specific movements
for the first time.
“The “˜Valient Series’ really pushed the
dancers to their physical limits,” Brown said.
Following the techniques of this style, Brown says she directs
her focus to the external contexts of her dancers, incorporating
props like rooftops and walls into her choreographies.
Brown has also expanded her works to include dance to classical
music and she has produced several dance pieces for operas.
Her most recent works, however, include jazz. Infusing the
techniques of dancers from Harlem’s Savory Ballroom that date
back to black culture in the 1930s, Brown has wrestled with the
relationship between jazz and modern dance. With the musical
talents of composer and trumpeteer Dave Douglas, “El
Trilogy’s” choreography will show this fusion with jazz
music.
Brown’s creative progress and zeal for postmodern dance
has won her much recognition both nationally and globally.
In addition to receiving recognition in France, she was the
first female recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation
Fellowship and was invited to serve on the National Council on the
Arts by former President Clinton in 1994.
Even today, Brown is an active member in the aesthetic dance
arena as head of the Center for Dance Composition, founded by her
company in 2000.
For her future choreographies, Brown plans to invoke all of her
past techniques and styles while also incorporating many other
forms of art and bringing dance and these arts together in her
works.
“I want to integrate all the voices of expression, from
visual arts, to drawing, to music,” Brown said.
DANCE: Trisha Brown Dance Company’s
“El Trilogy” will be showing at Royce Hall Feb. 1-2 at
8pm. Tickets are available for $30-$45, and $14 (for UCLA students)
at the UCLA Central Ticket Office. For more information and to
purchase tickets, call (310) 825-2101.